Submissions

We are interested in the potential of literature, in literature where lines between fiction, memoir and history blur (Sebald, Cendrars, Bolaño, Joyce), in experimental [1] writing, in fiction in translation, in the unconventional and the under recognised, in the personal essay (Sontag, Dyer). We are a literary journal equally interested in the arts (fine art, photography, architecture, film, music), in culture, in politics. We’re looking for smart writing, not academic.

Online

gorse‘s website will publish shorter pieces of criticism [2], narrative essays and interviews all year round. We are not currently considering fiction or poetry. Please send a query, or the first 500 words of your proposed essay, to info [at] gorse [dot] ie, with ‘Website’ in the subject line. Work should be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable as long as you tell us straightaway if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere. We will do our best to reply to all queries, but if you don’t hear back from us within six weeks please feel free to submit to another venue. Please note that as our resources are limited, we are only in a position to offer contributors a token fee. Finished pieces for the website would ideally be between 500 to 3000 words.
We are closed for online submissions, pending a website redesign.

Print

gorse is published twice a year. We are currently closed for submissions, but will re-open late July 2020.

Some guidelines:

a) All submissions should be previously unpublished
b) Submissions should ideally not be under consideration elsewhere and, besides poetry, should be a minimum 1,500 words in length
c) No more than one fiction submission (we want to read your best story)
d) Non-fiction authors: we would like to read finished essays
e) We have a (pretty long) wish list of interview subjects, but we encourage proposals
f) We love translations, but they should be accompanied by a copy of the original text
g) Our Irish language section is commission only at this stage
h) Poetry submissions should be 4-8 pages of work
i) You should familiarise yourself with the kind of writing we like.

Some additional points can be read here.

We can offer a small fee for contributions, as well as a copy of the journal in which your work appears.

 


1. We acknowledge the word ‘experimental’ is not without its problems. (See John O’Brien on this point: “If Sterne were writing today, he would be labeled a postmodernist, but what sense would that make, given when he was actually writing? As far as I am concerned, the history of fiction is one of invention, oftentimes playful and conscious of itself, but always pushing limits in terms of what it is and what else it can be. But I absolutely do not think of a Sterne or a Joyce as “experimenters”: they didn’t experiment, they made these remarkable books whose ingenuity and art are rarely seen in other writers or matched. Their works are finished and complete achievements, not experiments.”) ‘Experimental’ is not weird for the sake of weird, it is innovation.

2. “I. The critic is the strategist in the literary battle. II He who cannot take sides should keep silent. III. The critic has nothing in common with the interpreter of past cultural epochs. IV. Criticism must talk the language of artists. For the terms of the cenacle are slogans. And only in slogans is the battle-cry heard…” Walter Benjamin